A steady heartbeat answered the five.
Nothing met Sawyer.
No smoke rose from its chimneys. No lantern light crowned the palisade. For a border settlement, the silence was wrong—flattened, deliberate.
Bran raised a hand and called out.
"Guards! Open the gate!"
His voice carried. It came back unanswered.
They reached the palisade and found the gate barred from within. Bran tested it once, then again, harder. The iron latch did not move.
He glanced sideways. "Kristaphs."
The rogue was already there, crouched near the gate, ear turned toward the wood, fingers resting lightly against the grain. He stilled, listening—not just for sound, but for the absence of it.
Nothing.
Kristaphs straightened and shook his head.
"No footsteps. No breath. No movement at all."
Bran's jaw tightened.
"Faust," he said, sharp and immediate. "Break it down. Now."
Faust did not hesitate. Panic left no room for debate. He stepped forward and drew the Song in a rush, sigils flaring unevenly along his arm as the air began to hum under the sudden weight of power. It was a simple spell known for overwhelming force. Wind Pulse. Where Song only had to go in one direction, forward.
The wooden gate groaned as force gathered against it, planks creaking, iron screaming in protest.
Then the bar shifted.
The gate began to open from the inside.
"Stop!" Agnes called.
Too late.
The spell was already committed.
That was when the whistle rang out.
It vanished beneath the shouting, beneath the rising pitch of the Song, beneath the panic of the moment. No one registered it as sound.
But the spell faltered.
Faust gasped as control snapped back into place. The Song wavered—just enough—allowing him to unwind the nearly completed spell before release. The gathered force collapsed inward, dispersing harmlessly. He experienced no backlash.
The gate finished opening on its own.
For a moment, no one spoke.
The ranger ran forward in a panic, grabbing the bewildered mage.
"Faust! Are you alright? Look at me, can you hear me?"
Through the ebbs and flows of his friends' barrage, he meekly responded.
"I'm ok Agnes, no Echo."
His voice cut through the chaos, rendering the party in a daze
Then Bran laughed, breathless, clapping Faust on the shoulder.
"No Echo? You did it my man. You stopped it."
Agnes nodded, relief softening her expression.
"That was excellent control, Faust. But your surprises are cutting our lives short buddy."
Kristaphs exhaled slowly, tension draining from his frame. Simple relief. Though, he did scoff at the irony of what Agnes just said.
Only Aluna felt the cold.
A shiver ran down her spine. For the briefest instant, the Song had not surged or resisted.
It had been disturbed.
Her gaze drifted, unbidden, toward Sawyer.
He stood apart, silent, unchanged.
The guard who had opened the gate bowed hurriedly. "Forgive us," he said. "The head priest called for prayer."
Aluna froze.
A Concierge.
Sacred beasts in the outer regions—ordained to cleanse those who had lost the blessing. Those who no longer carried Song.
She had known this.
She had simply forgotten.
Forgotten because of one impossible variable.
Sawyer.
The gate closed behind them with a muted thud.
Sawyer felt it more than heard it.
They entered the town's main street in a loose formation, boots striking packed earth worn smooth by generations of passing feet. The buildings leaned inward, timber and stone pressed close as if reluctant to leave space between them. Windows were shuttered despite the hour. Those that weren't revealed slivers of watching eyes.
The unease was immediate.
Not fear. Not hostility.
Reverence.
Sawyer recognized it too well.
Charms hung from doorframes—knotted cord, etched bone, scraps of iron stamped with prayer sigils. Each one hummed faintly with Song.
Each one ignored him completely.
Agnes's resonance softened as they walked, instinctively subdued by the atmosphere. Bran kept his hand close to his weapon. Kristaphs melted to the edges of the street, senses tuned outward, searching for threats that refused to announce themselves.
Faust whispered, barely audible. "Why is everyone… quiet?"
No one answered.
Ahead, the street widened, opening into a small stone plaza. A crowd had gathered there, townsfolk standing shoulder to shoulder, heads bowed. At the center rose a low dais, hastily erected, its surface worn by years of ritual use.
A priest stood upon it.
He spoke in measured tones, voice carrying without effort. Song wove through his words—not forceful, not radiant, but dense with authority. Candles burned at his feet despite the daylight, their flames steady and untroubled by wind.
Sawyer felt none of it.
But he felt the people.
He felt what they had.
Their attention did not rest on the priest alone. It drifted—subtle, unfocused—drawn not to Sawyer himself, but to the faint dissonance his presence created among the Song-filled. Most felt only a vague discomfort, an instinctive urge to look away.
They did not know why.
"A servant of God has fallen," the priest intoned. "Struck down while fulfilling holy duty."
A murmur rippled through the crowd, grief and fear braided together.
Sawyer slowed.
Aluna stiffened beside him.
Of course, Sawyer thought. That spawn.
In the outer regions, such beasts were not merely tolerated—they were sanctified. Instruments of divine maintenance. Cleansers of those who no longer bore the Song.
Those like him.
Sawyer kept his gaze forward, posture unchanged. To most eyes, he was simply another armed traveler—quiet, reserved, unremarkable in ways that defied explanation.
But Aluna felt it all at once.
Not absence in the way others imagined it. Not emptiness.
Silence.
A truth perceptible only to those trained to listen where the Song should be and was not. Doctrine pressed down on her memory, belief snapping into alignment with a realization she had allowed herself to forget.
Not the danger of the town.
But the danger of him being recognized.
The priest's gaze lifted.
It passed over the gathered faithful without pause—
Then stopped.
Just for a breath.
On Sawyer.